I never used to think that anything good ever came out of Spain. Latino women never really caught my interest, Latino music just plain sucks gringo balls and Latino food is overpriced and gives me seriously painful gas. Hell, even Spanish peanuts makes me vomit! In fact, the only thing that interested me about Spanish culture was the mid-day nap time known as the Siesta and that guy Vega from the "Street Fighter II" video games. Then along comes director Alex de la Iglesia, who shows us that Spain does have something else to offer: bad cinema. My first exposure to Spanish movies was Aftermath: a twisted little short film about a Necrophiliac in a morgue. Aftermath could've easily been born of blatant exploitationism and created as just another way to amuse the sick and twisted, but, it actually came out pretty damn artsy. However, that's a story for a different review and this is a review for a different movie, so allow me to get to that movie. Alex de la Iglesia directs Accion Mutante (which translates to "Mutant Action") with a heavy twist of humor, making it into what I can only describe as a foreign Troma film... only more stylish and cutting down on some of the irreverent and maniacal elements (i.e. there's less graphic sex and vulgarity, and there's no blind chicks to terrorize). The sombrero's on the other foot now, so let's sit back and absorb some culture!

Accion Mutante centers around a gang of handicappable thugs who are trapped in a future of material girls and the country club owning men who they're basically whoring themselves to. The beautiful people rule the world basically, and it's up to Accion Mutante to show them that the unloved and undesirables will not sit back while they're overrun by fake breasts, sports cars and deodorant commercials! These guys wouldn't hesitate two seconds to shove a missile up Pat Bateman's ass! We open the film with our freakish freedom fighters attempting to kidnap two of these snobbish upper class Narcissuses. Our working class cripples screw up though, and accidentally suffocate their target... maybe there's a reason that special forces terrorist groups don't employ many handicapped members... Oh, by the way, this is all urged on by the old "Mission: Impossible" theme. The choice of music should give you an idea of what we're dealing with here. A news report following the incident gives us a little more incite into the gang so that the plot doesn't have to! Seems Accion Mutante have terrorized health clubs, bodybuilders and sperm banks for over a decade! The gang is made up of Siamese twins Alex and Juan Abadie; the legless Cesar Ravenstein (aka Quimecefa) who not only has to float around in a hoverchair, but also has 5lbs. of explosives implanted in his chest for emergencies(!!); Jose Oscar Talleria (aka Manitas), the group's mechanic whose arms apparently don't work; the gang's deaf mute giant, Amancio Gonzalez (aka M.A.), who's not only one of the world's strongest beings, but also one of it's stupidest; and Jose Montera (aka Chepa), a hunchbacked dwarf who's also a Jew, a mason, a communist and a presumed homosexual... I don't know whether to be terrified of these guys or point and laugh obnoxiously!

Recently Accion Mutante hasn't been performing up to standards though, because their leader, Ramon Yarritu, has been imprisoned for the last 5 years on charges of illegal arms possession. Ramon's handicap is his face, which is horrible mangled on one side like Two-Face from the Batman franchise. Now that Ramon is out of prison though, Accion Mutante is ready for their big score: kidnap the daughter of a wealthy bakery magnate and ransom her off for big cash! The best time to nab her? Her wedding day of course! Then, when they have Patricia (the daughter) firmly in their grasp, they can sell her back to her rich father for all the dough he's got... yeah, I know that was a bad pun, but this is a bad movie, so I think I can be forgiven. The plan? After blowing the heads off of the wedding bouncer cyborgs, Ramon and his mutants sneak into the party with a hollow cake. When the moment arises, Chepa will bust out of the top of the cake and open fire on the crowd while the others nab young Patty and they make their escape. You'd think that someone would notice these freaks amongst the pretty party guests, especially considering their ugly faces are plastered all over the news, but I guess rich people don't watch much TV, because no one seems to recognize that these cake decorators are terrorists. Oh well, if they're that dense than I guess they deserve to be gunned down during a wedding. Accion Mutante's scheme goes as planned at first, after the dunder heads get their shit together and everyone understands their roles. Well, that is until the happy couple jumps the gun and decide to cut the cake a little early. Yep, Patty, who obviously likes to slaughter cakes for whatever reason, winds up stabbing Chepa! This should be interesting...

Injured and very unhappy, Chepa pops up out of the cake and opens up on the party guests, mowing them down with his assault rifle. While he uses up his last breaths to take out as many upper class swine as possible, the rest of Accion grabs Patty as planned. In their escape though, the cops arrive and M.A. gets gunned down. Damn, two of the more interesting characters and already they're getting killed off before they get their chance to shine... The remaining members load Patty up on their spaceship and head for the wasteland planet of Axturias, leaving behind a ransom video for Patty's dad, Mr. Orujo. The price? 100 million ecus... what that means in ca$h I have NO CLUE, but I'm guessing it's a large sum. They want the money delivered to them in a place called Devil's Valley on Axturias in some bar inhabited by crazy miners... and no, not "minors", this is no place for kids. Then again, I wouldn't mind putting those brats from "Family Affair" in this type of situation. Mr. French can't save you now! Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!... Sorry, day dreaming. The problem with this hostage situation is that Ramon tells the other Mutantes that the price on Patty's head is only 10 million, to be divided amongst the 5 remaining members. But, they find out the real price of 100 million while watching news coverage on the event... I smell mutiny! When they confront Ramon about the news, he laughs it off and says that it's just a trick by the media to try and turn the Accion Mutante against each other and that they should all just put their paranoias to rest and sit back and relax until they collect their dirty money. Ramon of course shows his true colors though, as he feeds Manitas to mutant cats after everyone else has left! I think Ramon learned a few things from my old bosses at IBM...

So, now it's Ramon, Quimicefa and the twins. Will they put their differences aside and share the full 100 million equally? Or, will it become a "last man standing" battle of deceit and treachery with winner take all? Somehow I doubt it'd be much of a flick if we went with the first option... Queef, I mean, Quimicefa, is the next to go, as Ramon sets off his chest explosives and turns him into a greasy smear. Nothing against the handicapped or anything, but what level of fucking retardation does a person have to hit before they're planting explosives in themselves?! In Queef's case, I'm guessing "total". Ramon however, the fiendish perro he is, turns the story around, suckering Alex and Juan into thinking that Queef was the traitor. Why blow himself up? Out of grief for what he's done to his only friends, duh! Again I have to ask the question of what level of fucking retardation does a person (or in this case, persons... I think) have to hit before they'd believe Ramon's pathetic excuse?! And again, I have to say that in the twins' case, "total", because they do in fact fall for it. This "last man standing" is gonna be an awfully short contest from the looks of it... if only the Bruce Willis tripe of the same name could've been equally as brief... As for the gagged pastry princess, she's watched Ramon do away with BOTH Mutantes and is trying to tell the twins, though since she's tied up and unable to speak, I guess the Alex and Juan are screwed. Speaking of screwed, I wonder how Siamese twins have sex. Do they get a girl and double stuff her? Do they take turns? Does one guy get laid and the other has to sit there and try to act like nothing's happening? I know this may be a disturbing topic to some readers, but ever since Romero lived out his sick fantasies of cripple sex on tape with Monkey Shines, these questions run through my head all day long! That episode of "Tales From The Crypt" doesn't help matters either!

Just like clockwork, that night Ramon plants a butcher knife in Juan's face. Alex wakes up just in time to witness it, thereby ruining any chances Ramon might have of convincing him that Juan did himself in out of grief from being the REAL traitor. Alex whips out his massive twelve-shooter and plants a bullseye on Ramon's beady little eyes, causing Ramon to beg and plead for his life, saying that, yes, Juan had indeed been plotting with Ramon against him... that's the best he could come up with?! Wow, maybe Ramon's not really sly, maybe Accion Mutante is just made up of the stupidest goons this side of Alabama! Alex proves he's got at least one functioning brain cell though, as he doesn't fall for his nefarious leader's lies, instead keeping the gun trained on the ol' kill spot: Ramon's head. In desperation, Ramon realizes his head games won't work, and confesses that the ransom is indeed 100 mil. He offers to join with Alex, split the cash and disband what's left of Accion Mutante, instead teaming up with Alex to create the terrorist coupling of, "the Deep Space Duo"... sounds like a Star Trek themed gay sex show for hire Alex, don't fall for it! But, Alex is still a tad upset over Ramon hacking Juan to death, so he empties a few rounds in his boss's ass (something we'd all like to do)! A few gun shot wounds aren't going to stop a stubborn cretin like Ramon though, as he soon gains the upper hand and brains Alex's head off the ship's control panel repeatedly. This of course fucks up the controls, sending the craft careening uncontrollably into the surface of planet Axturias. What kinda word is "careen" anyway?

The crash is a mild inconvenience and nothing more, as Ramon, Patty and Alex all survive. Grabbing Patty, Ramon heads out to the meeting point where he still intends to make the pay off, with or without his special ed teammates. As for Alex, he tries to pursue, dragging what's left of his dead twin, still attached to him, across the scorched desert. Luckily for Alex, he runs into a kindly blind hermit amidst the unforgiving sands, and the old codger cleans up Juan's corpse and stuffs him, thereby preserving him and preventing any infection to Alex... and saving Alex from an inescapable nasal holocaust. When we check in with Mr. Orujo, he's arrived on Axturias to find the remains of the Mutantes' ship. When he finds no bodies inside he assumes that Ramon and Patty are on their way to the exchange point, so he packs up the ransom and heads out... with a few heavily armed acquaintances. Speaking of Ramon and his bounty, they run into a few playmates. While asking for directions, the happy couple comes across the home of a family of irradiated inbred Axturian rednecks. These wierdos in tight shorts invite Ramon and Patty to dinner, where they offer to trade some items to Ramon in exchange for some fuck time with the lovely bride. Ramon is content on leaving her virginal though, so he can collect his 100 mil, so he declines... which gets him stabbed in the hand and tied up! Never say "no" to the Spanish equivalent of The Hills Have Eyes family. With Ramon tied up and getting his chest wounds picked and poked at by the family's psychopathic runt, the bigger (and far fatter) slobs prepare to spend some quality time with the lovely Patricia... ah, rape, the Axturian family bonding passtime!

While all this is going on, Alex runs into his own misfortunes when his blind companion gets a rather large hole in his chest! This hole is a gift from a gang of deranged killer miners... yep, in addition to all the other madness in this film, we now get killer miners... who drive a monster truck... I told ya the Spanish know how to make a movie! From here we go back to Ramon and Patricia and I'm kinda guessing at what happens, since the actual acts are never shown. So, here goes: when the hicks try to rape Patty, Ramon passes out from the pain of his injuries (or loss of blood). While he's catchin 'Z's, Patty turns the tables on the bloated greasy heathens and ties them up in a very homoerotic situation. Then she struck a deal with the runt of the litter, offering up her pungent panties in exchange for the keys to the family car and a map of Devil's Valley. She then packed Ramon up in the passenger's seat and heads out to the exchange location, which happens to be a bar called the Lost Mine, which happens to be where those rabid miners like to kick back and down 40s. Of course, that's the abridged version of my side of the story, as the full version also includes alien invaders, man eating clams and a vampire army led by Dick Clark! Look for it in paperback on bookstore shelves this December. A New York Times #1 Bestseller for sure!

After the runt unties them, the oily bucktoothed lard asses hop into their rampaging construction vehicle and head out in chase of their escaped dinner guests. Along the way they find Alex and his better, deader half dangling from a hangman's tree, where the miners left him after getting bored with his Siamese twin antics. Cutting the freak down, they take him to the Lost Mine too, whether as back up or out of the kindness of their hearts or just to sodomize at a later time I'm unsure, but they take Alex with them none-the-less. Meanwhile, a problem has arisen with Ramon and Patty: Patty's got the whole Stockholm Syndrome going, which pretty much sums up as she's fallen in love with her captor. But you can't really blame her, right ladies? I mean, Ramon's the rugged and rebellious type. He's the freakin' James Dean of the handicapped terrorist scene! So, the hapless victim has become a victim of Cupid instead... and Ramon's not happy about that. Ramon's especially not down with Patty's idea that the two will take Mr. Orujo's cash and become the intergalactic answer to Bonnie & Clyde, because not only does he work alone now, but he's not about to give up half of the ransom he worked so hard for! This topic is still in debate when the couple finally arrive at the Lost Mine, where Patty quickly becomes the target of every roaming eye in the place. Mr. Orujo makes himself known and gives Ramon a briefcase in exchange for Patty. But, Ramon's in for a rude awakening when he discovers that the case isn't full of cash, but instead finds a pile of comicbooks. Obviously not a fan boy, our hero/villain whips out his piece and blasts the cameraman! Oh, I forgot to mention that Patty's would-be husband informed the press about the ransom situation and the location of the exchange, so there's also a news crew there covering the entire escapade, which explains the dead cameraman. I love seeing the media get their money's worth.

Mr. O escalates the situation when he reveals he's got an explosive device large enough to level the bar and everyone in it! Why? Well, with his daughter likely deflowered (seeing as how she was kidnapped by a gang of depraved terrorists), Mr. O feels he's got nothing left to live for... all a father wants to do is marry off his virginal daughter... I guess. But, before daddy can nuke the place, Alex arrives and ventilates the crotchitty old business man. A barroom Old West type shoot out ensues, everybody's gunnin for everybody else, and before you know it the cops show up and surround the joint! Ramon, in one last act of atonement (or just because he's tired of putting up with all this crap for a handful of comicbooks and WAY too much bullshit), grabs Mr. O's bomb and walks out the door, into the awaiting hail of police fire... gotta love the cops of the future and their "shoot anything that moves" mentality... kinda like the LAPD... Before he shuffles off this mortal coil, Ramon sets off the explosive and levels everything. Only the newly united couple of Patty and Alex (who's dropped his brother Juan's remains like so much rotten beef) stumble from the rubble of the Lost Mine, out into the daylight, guns locked and loaded as they take their first steps in what promises to be a very unusual relationship... that I'm sure George Romero would love to document... pervert. Well, that's the end... oh, and the band played on. Finally, to sum up Accion Mutante, I will glorify it in it's native tongue, that way I sound sophisticated and the film sounds classy! Mi maleta se arde y mi pene no está haciendo mucho mejor!*